Consulting and Contract Research

Consulting

Flinders Partners is an agent of the university, and therefore acts on your behalf in contracting your services to industry.  Your contracts are in fact, between Flinders Partners and the client, not you and the client.

Consulting opens up valuable opportunities to advance your research and career as well as attract an additional source of revenue and research funding. 

Benefits for you:

• Anecdotes and credibility for more effective teaching
• Gain insights into industry ‘challenges’ or access research materials.
• Build relationships which can lead to opportunities and funding to conduct other research projects (e.g. ARC linkages, Researcher in Business grants etc).
• Apply your research knowledge to address real world problems.
• Gain additional funds for research, RAs and equipment, student projects.

Benefits of working with Flinders Partners:

• Access to professional skill-sets and know-how
• Intellectual property management
• Advice and management of contract landscaping and negotiations
• Reliable advice on competitive commercial rates

Our services

Flinders Partners can be engaged to help you convert your expert knowledge into commercial services, and to advise on the most appropriate type of agreement to formalise contractual arrangements.  We can also be engaged to provide advice on strengthening a tender submission proposal, and to negotiate the terms of tender contracts.

More specifically, in terms of contract review and advice Flinders Partners can:

• review external agreements (client initiated);
• draft agreements and other legal documents, including utilisation of standard University agreement templates (University initiated);
• negotiate terms of contract and conditions;
• undertake contract landscaping exercise where prior contracts relate to new contract;
• advice on delegations for contract sign-off;
• contract execution; and
• contract registration.

In relation to tenders, Flinders Partners can:

• assist with compliance and submission of an identified tender opportunity;
• check eligibility relating to submission criteria;
• legal review of terms and conditions (where applicable);
• budget advice, including commercial pricing;
• provision of key information on management abilities, financial credentials, insurance and any relevant policies;
• quality check on final draft; and
• submission in accordance with tender guidelines.

How To Become a Consultant (PDF)

Flinders University Research Forms

Contract Research & Development

Contract research and development offers similar benefits to consulting, however, the main difference between the two is with contract R&D, new knowledge is being created, which may offer opportunities to publish (so long as this does not go against any terms of the contract).

Contract research is a paid-for service performed by university researchers for external clients.  Contract research is usually entered into when an industry partner requires a researcher to explore specific, previously unresearched aspects of a problem.  The research contract will define specific objectives and deliverables, and ownership of any new IP discovered is usually negotiated between parties in good faith.